The Dark Side
by MaggieMai
Summary: How Anakin might have felt about choosing The Dark Side.


Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars or any related titles. George Lucas does (that lucky cow…).

He could feel it growing inside him, pulsing hot and red against the walls built by his Jedi training. It pushed him, ached for him to succumb. It was there, the Dark Side was there watching him, looking for him to stumble. The Dark was there, pounding a steadily increasing rhythm inside his brain, waiting for him to break. If he let go, forgot everything that has been taught to him, he would break. He could feel it pressing against him and he did not know how much longer he could hold out.

He did not want to break, he could not. He was afraid to. He was afraid that he would lose all of the precarious pieces of the life that he had worked so hard to keep secret, to keep safe. He did not want to lose any of the things that he had acquired and grown accustomed too. He had everything in his life fitted together so that the cracks of the mismatched pieces were nearly invisible. It was almost perfect. He could have his wife, his place in the Jedi ranks. No one need ever know how he had broken his vows to both of them. He could not lose it all now. He had worked too hard, too long for everything to fall apart now. He could not lose it. He would not! If he lost it, he knew that he would never be able to find it again, any of it.

The life of a Jedi revolved around altruism and letting go, but what if he did not want that life anymore? He was a man. A man in love with a woman whom he had to keep a secret from everyone he knew. A man about to become a father to the child he had created out of love and adulation. He would be a father, a good father like the one he had always thought that he once might have had. He loved them both more than he could describe. He adored his Padme and he adored his unborn child and he knew that if anyone ever found out, all that he held dear would be taken away from him.

He could not live like this! He wanted to be selfish. He wanted to be with the woman that he loved in daylight, to walk about together, hand in hand proclaiming their love and happiness to the worlds. Was he not entitled to happiness? Would he forever have to remain a monk, inhibited to his Order? Should he have to always deny himself so that everyone else in the galaxy could have what they desire? Is this what his life had truly been about until now? The idea that one man should be deprived of what he wants more than anything in all the worlds for the sake of peace, a peace that could never truly be formed? The Jedi Order was about fairness, but was this fair?

He did not want to let go of the rules of his training, but if he ever did… Imagine what he could gain if he did allow himself freedom from the stringent laws of the Jedi…How his power would increase if unbridled, let loose to the full unrestrained height of all that he was capable of!

He could feel it deep in the recesses of his chest. The hollow call of The Darkness from within his heart. He tried; he so desperately tried to restrain himself against the allure of that kind of power. He forced himself to look away from the seduction, from what was being offered to him… but he could not do it.

For one brief moment that torturous pulsing in his temples stopped. For one blissful moment, he had everything he ever wanted: power, the respect of his Order, his love, his wife, his Padme. He was whole. But the pressure building silently up beneath was too strong.

He broke. The walls of his morality shattered in the heat of his succession to dark supremacy, almost burning his mind to cinders. The explosion in his head propelled the pieces of his carefully constructed life away from his grasping fingers. With this choice, he had forced everything that he had ever loved so far away, that there was no hope of ever retrieving them.

But he could breathe. At last he had let go and the dark power that had taunted him for so long filled him, focused him, bringing him to the peak of his power. He shuddered as The Dark strained through his swollen veins, pushing sluggishly onward as it salved the seared edges of his soul. He was drunk, intoxicated by the heady taste of true power, dark power.

He was beyond redemption now. No one could save him and he was not willing to go back. He was changed, had been mutilated past repair. His mind flickered to a single silvered moment of absolute despair. He could no longer see the stars. He saw only fire and flames.

Then he realized that he was finally broken and he had begun to fade into Darkness.


End file.
